Valentines day will be here soon, and I don’t know about you but I feel like sometimes men can be pretty hard to buy for. Yes, there are some things that your significant other may want that are pretty specific. You should probably know what those are, but a great food supplement is always super handy. You could be that person that just gives candy – but where’s the originality in that? Give him what he really wants – a Brown Sugar Candied Bacon Bouquet!

You’ll start by mixing brown sugar and chili powder together.

Next you’ll dredge the bacon in this mixture.

Now you’ll be making the roses! To do this you’ll need to roll them up and I would absolutely do this pretty tightly and definitely make the fat side the bottom of your rose because it’s more uniform and will be more stable.

Finish stabilizing your base with two toothpicks. Make sure you’re focusing one of the entry/exit points on the tail.

Place this rose on a greased cookie sheet.

Repeat this until you finish out your package of bacon. Bake them for 25 minutes.

Once they are baked you’ll be taking apart the plastic bouquet by removing the petals. Each flower will include a stem attachment, plastic basket and sepal.

After they are completely baked let them cool for about 10 minutes on a plate to drain some of the grease.

Then dab them on a paper towel.

Insert the stem attachment through the plastic basket and wedge this into the bottom of the bacon rose. the top two attachments before the sepal are pictured below. This is what it will look like completely put together.

If you find that this is difficult, go ahead and re-roll the bacon strip into a rose around the plastic basket and stem.  Attach the sepal.

This part is messy and takes about twenty minutes at a minimum to do for about five roses.

Continue to do this until you run out of bacon roses and have filled the empty stems. I would highly recommend taking care in putting this together at a time that is the closest possible to it being given as a gift. I didn’t find it to be especially durable, but at least this Brown Sugar Candied Bacon Bouquet was delicious!

Do you know how you’re going to celebrate your significant other on the fourteenth?

Brown Sugar Candied Bacon Bouquet

Ingredients

• 1 Lb of Bacon
• Plastic Bouquet
• 1 Cup of Brown Sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of Red Chili Powder
• Cooking Spray
• Toothpicks

Instructions

1. Mix 1 Cup of Brown Sugar and 1 1/2 teaspoons of Red Chili Powder together.
2. Dredge strips of bacon individually in sugar and chili mix.
3. Roll the strips into roses, keeping the fat side on the bottom, and stabilize the base by placing perpendicular toothpicks to form an ‘x’ paying special attention to the tail of the bacon.
4. Continue this until all of the bacon is formed into roses and place them on a greased cookie sheet.
5. Bake them for 25 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
6. Let them cool for ten minutes, place on a separate platter to drain some of the grease. Dab them on a paper towel.
7. Take the toothpicks out and place the stem attachment and threaded through the plastic basket in the base of the bacon rose. You may need to re-roll them to do this. Next you’ll attach the sepal and thread the stem attachment to the stem.
8. Serve this to your honey!

Thanks for reading!

Lauren